In our “The Demand and Supply Gap in Business Analytics“ blog, we established that all professionals (irrespective of their industry or experience level) need to upskill and it is a golden opportunity for them to not only close the gap between organizational expectations and professionals skill-sets but witness unprecedented career growth. Let’s look at the 5 categories of professionals who would benefit most from pursuing business analytics:
Mid-Career Professionals Who Feel Stagnated in Their Jobs
While business analytics provides opportunities for everyone from senior leadership positions to entry-level professionals, the most value from the analytics wave can be driven by mid-career professionals who feel stagnated in their jobs. A business standard article revealed that “Around 52% of the total number of professionals with 1-10 years of experience (mid-career professionals) in India would consider moving to another job within two years, according to a study by LinkedIn which has more than 28 million professionals in Indian and 332 million worldwide.” Business analytics presents an enormous opportunity to professionals in “all domains” to leave behind a stagnated job for a more lucrative career. According to Harvard Business Review, “For mid-level professionals, who have typically spent 5-10 years in a specific industry and developed skills in a core discipline, the next level of growth demands familiarity with many other aspects of the business – strategy, operations, negotiation, and finance to name some. Individual contributors need to develop a more generalist approach to make better business decisions. For example, when a mid-level doctor or healthcare professional working for a hospital transitions to a senior or leadership role in hospital management, she needs to be able to make decisions, weighing multiple aspects, for several functions of the organization. This requires skills such as interpreting data, studying the market landscape and developing differentiated offerings, understanding the financial implications of operational decisions and analyzing pricing and consumer behavior.”
Professionals on a Sabbatical
Let’s start by saying that the target audience in this category doesn’t have to be women necessarily. Men on a break for their entrepreneurial adventures or women on maternity leaves can both make the best use of their break by taking up a course in business analytics and entering the workforce again with a bang. Upskilling also shields you from all the questions about why you took a break, are you still relevant, etc. in job interviews. A break was earlier a taboo on a good professional resume but it is no longer so thanks to the opportunities in every domain to grow and bring your ideas to the fore. Pursuing business analytics is not only fruitful to cover the gap on a resume but also for staying abreast with the smartest way of making decisions.
Professionals Who Would Like to Switch Careers or Transition
It won’t be easy to switch from one domain to another. But by learning business analytics, people can switch from one domain to another. It is actually a very clever way of transitioning from a field that once sounded glorious and is now boring you. As an example, a software test engineer can look for business analytics opportunities within his own firm to make a switch. Once he/she has an experience of a year or so, he can make a shift to another organization even if it is a different domain. Several Great Learning alumni have successfully transitioned from one domain to another. 66% of our alumni transition into business and functional roles within 6 months of completing our business analytics course. But when it comes to making this reality, 15-hour courses will not be able to give you either the confidence or the skillset to make this change.
Non-IT Professionals
I believe we have already established that business analytics is not a career choice just for IT professionals. An HBR example states that “when a mid-level doctor or healthcare professional working for a hospital transitions to a senior or leadership role in hospital management, she needs to be able to make decisions, weighing multiple aspects, for several functions of the organization. This requires skills such as interpreting data, studying the market landscape and developing differentiated offerings, understanding the financial implications of operational decisions and analyzing pricing and consumer behavior. If she is comfortable with business concepts and armed with the right tools, she can drive better operational performance and profitability, as well as enhance patient experience at the hospital. This ultimately leads to achieving both individual and business growth.” This example is one of the many that clearly demonstrates that automation and technology are transforming the world and anyone should capitalize on this trend.
Senior Leaders
Senior leader and PGP-BABI alumni Sreevasan Ps says, “Anyone who holds a senior position now needs to have a basic analytics mindset. All the organizations talk about social media and analytics and cloud these days. When you take a deeper look at things, data analytics is something that touches everyone’s life in every industry. It is an all-pervasive subject.” He further added, “It is almost certain that we are moving into a data-driven world which means decisions are going to be increasingly data-driven. The traditional heuristic decisions, experience-based decisions, or hunch-based decisions will be giving way to data-based decisions. If that is the world coming up, then it’s very important for one to be data-literate.” Need we say more?
